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I think people's expectations for this card is a little high, and that is not their fault at all, it's ASUS' fault. They obviously didn't do any Q&A on their TOP cards. They didn't account for the "Kepler Boost," which is pushing these cards way pass their capabilities.
I think ASUS is probably going to lower the stock clocks on these cards so they can boost to safe levels.
You guys gotta remember they're only guaranteeing 1137MHz boosted. Unless kepler boost is suppose to be a bonus on top of the 1137, but i'm not so sure it is. The boost varies too much.
Bottomline is these cards should work out of the box without any tweaking. It's totally unacceptable for any owner to have to tweak or underclock their card in order for it to work.
Looks like I was fortunate enough to be one of a lucky few that has a card that works out of the box and can be pushed pass stock.
Just wanted to add, I think the card itself is awesome, good build quality, looks great, fans are quiet and efficient, and the backplate is a very nice bonus. My suggestion to all potential buyers is get the non-TOP card and OC it yourself. Same card without the possibility of the TOP card boosting past its capability and crashing on you. Instead, you get to push it as far as it can go.

Reference GTX670 cards should only boost to 980, yet they boost to 1080 or higher. So boosting over what they were supposed to isn't exclusive to Asus TOP cards. I don't agree with your theory. Are you implying that all Kepler boost is flawed, even on reference design cards?Edited by Glottis - 6/3/12 at 12:08am

Ok guys, finally the card (top) worked perfectly with BF3 game for few hours without problem. It boosted to 1241 core and 3005 mem. The temp hit between 63C-69C with 1:1 fan speed. So far, the card had never crash on me for this game. I can say this card is a beast. I won't regret for buying this card. Beside, I'm so sorry for those who got their cards RMA. Sometime lucky people get lucky stuff.

Hi all, I've had my Asus 670 directcu ii top for a few days and my benchmarks are troubling me.
But first I should note a few things:
1. I have not Touched the OC controls. This is all the stock OC from the Top version with no user intervention.
2. My card has given me no issues so far (yay). No crashes and handled a 1.5 hour heaven benchmark.
3. This screenshot is in windowed mode, but in fullscreen with nothing else running the score is like 1006 (in case that matters)
4. I've ran this benchmark many times now, after many reboots. I have the latest NVidia drivers and this computer is about 2 weeks old, so no mess of old drivers to conflict with.
However, what is up with the score? Isn't this way too low (I'm seeing a lot of 'stock' 1200ish scores).
So... the GPU clock reaches around 1250 and looks stable. The temps are 74C (after 1.5 hours they climb to 76C, but haven't had issues).
Also - my 3DMark 11 score is around 8100 (With MVP disabled - with its like 10k, but I guess that is cheating? MVP doesn't seem to change my Heaven benchmark more than a few points when it is enabled though) The stock benchmarks I see have been around 9k.
Thoughts?

Updating on some findings (I see a few people with the same issue - high clocks but low fps)
1. Installed and ran Heaven benchmark with Virtue MVP enabled and it lowered my score to UNDER 700.. ouch. But, I updated to the latest version of MVP and it brought the score back up to 1000 (basically nullifying the effect).
2. Updated my Bios (Asus P8Z77-V Pro) to latest version. This actually gave me a great boost! my 3DMark 11 scores are 9000 which is what I think should be normal (without MVP -> MVP will boost it above 10k), and Heaven benchmark has gotten as high as 1178! Which.. still isn't that great, but a helluva lot better than 994 and might even be alright.

However... since updating BIOS and getting better fps.. I now have these crashing issues in Heaven everyone is going on about. Took a few tries. Downclocking -20Mhz makes it stable...

And to who suggested disable v-sync and turn on maximum performance, no benefit gained :[

I'd still love to hear a theory on why such a big difference in FPS among the people with the Same Clock Speed. But, hope this helps someone.Edited by Umber - 6/3/12 at 12:38am

Increase the GPU Clock offset by an additional 20MHz, clear the Precision-X hardware monitor and unpause it, and start up a second Heaven Benchmark run. Immediately after the Heaven run completes, save your score (use a similar naming convention as you did above) and pause the Hardware Monitor. If you crashed or have any other symptoms of instability, go to Step 4. If your Heaven score decreased, that can mean one of three things. Either your overclock is unstable, your overclock is pushing you over the thermal or power throttle zone reducing your overall performance, or the benchmark was inconsistent. This is something that you need to be very vigilant of. Just because you hit a higher Max Boost frequency doesn't mean your GPU is performing better. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:
Compare this graph to the one i posted above in Step 1. In the first graph my GPU core was at a constant 1241MHz the entire time. As you can see here, my Max Boosted Frequency has gone up to 1264 but there's a ton of oscillation and it's also dipping extremely low too, even down to my base boost clock of 1120. So even though my card momentarily has a higher Max Boost, my overall performance has decreased substantially. This is why it's extremely important to always analyze the graphs after each offset increase. Higher is not always better with Kepler GPUs. If this is what your GPU Clock graph looks like (and/or even if you're seeing small 13mhz drops), go on to Step 3.

Here's an example of what a successful offset increase looks like:
Now you see my Max Boost is running at a constant 1264 with no dips. This is what you want to see with each additional increase in offset. So as long as your Heaven score hasn't decreased, and your Max Boost is running at a constant Frequency, then this means you're ready to increase the offset some more. Keep repeating this step (step 2) until you meet the criteria to go on to another step.

However, if your GPU clock doesn't show any variance, yet your Heaven score has decreased by more than 5 points, then i suggest that you re-run the Heaven Benchmark. If your score is still lower than the previous offset, then revert back to the previous Offset that had the highest score, and re-run Heaven again. If that score is still higher, then that suggests that your overclock with the increased offset is unstable. If this is the case, increase your offset back to the one that produced the lower score and then go to Step 4.

Edit: Just wanted to add, that this isn't the entire reason for your low scores. You're getting very little max boost variance. With your overclock, you should be getting around 45fps in Heaven. The minor throttling you're seeing would only reduce your Heaven FPS by 1 or less. So something else is lowering your scores.

By the way, you could easily fix that Max Boost variance by increasing the Power Target a bit. The fact that you're only maxing out at 103% makes me think you still have it set at 100% (default).Edited by SeanPoe - 6/3/12 at 12:56am

Reference GTX670 cards should only boost to 980, yet they boost to 1080 or higher. So boosting over what they were supposed to isn't exclusive to Asus TOP cards. I don't agree with your theory. Are you implying that all Kepler boost is flawed, even on reference design cards?

That's not what i'm implying. My point was I don't think ASUS accounted for kepler boost with their cards or didn't thoroughly test them to make sure they could handle the dynamic clocking.

Thanks for SeanPoe's guide I finally understand the difference between the boost clock and the kepler boost. For awhile I thought they were one and the same.

I finally understand the difference between the boost clock and the kepler boost. For awhile I thought they were one and the same.

My thoughts are, they are one and the same.
From my understanding, the chip practically decides how much to boost its clock according to its load.

Manufacturer's reported boost clock is supposed to be the minimum the chip overclocks itself under load but that is not accurate by my checking.

I played Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars yesterday, a fairly old and not that demanding game, and my TOP boosted up to 1050-1070 MHz and that was not even constant. Well below the reported 1137 MHz by asus.

After that I tried out Sniper Elite V2 for a couple of hours and it reached 2128 MHz for most of the time.Edited by javaneze - 6/3/12 at 2:54am

Here's an update on my card, for anyone who is interested. I've managed to get it stable (at least I hope so) at +35 on the clock and +600 on the memory. The card seems to be boosting to 1316mhz now, although the highest I've been able to reach is 1324, though that was slightly unstable and I didn't feel it was worth it. I'm still only averaging 45 fps in Heaven, and I have no idea why, but I think I'm happy with the results I've got and I may just leave it alone.